Where the Tea Parties Should Go From Here

The power of the movement is its independence from Democrats and the GOP.

By

Karl Rove

Updated Feb. 19, 2010 11:09 a.m. ET

There has been a lot of talk about combining the tea party movement with the Republican Party. And on a small scale, that seemed to happen last week in South Carolina after state GOP representatives agreed to create a "Tea Party Republicans" group to coordinate activities with tea partiers in Greenville and Spartanburg.

This week, however, those arrangements fell apart as some tea party groups dissented from the decision. Other attempts to draw tea party groups into formal alliances are running into similar...